Sorry Rowan Williams, But You're Still Wrong

In my last post, I attempted to confront Rowan Williams’s now notorious article attacking the government. Not because I have any particular brief for either of the parties that make up the coalition, but because Rowan Williams’s case rested on a patent falsehood: that the government’s policies in three specific areas, education, benefits policy and health, had no mandate since nobody had voted for them. Since I had a clear memory that the three areas of policy – which, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury, had not been openly declared, or particularly, in the case of education and benefits policy, debated during the election campaign – had in fact been declared and in the case of education and benefits policy widely discussed, I wrote an article to prove that this was the case. It seemed to me that this should be done, whether one supported the coalition’s policies or not, in the name of common justice, since Rowan Williams, by virtue of his position, would be listened to as a spokesman for other Christians.